The Eurogamer review of the Tribes of the East expansion is up and the reviewer was not impressed, to say the least. Here is his take on the standalone nature of the expansion:

"(...) it's £20, and you can buy the original for about £9 from Amazon. Or the original and the other expansion for £12. Moreover, if you wanted to buy the game before, you would have already bought it; the paltry extra nobs and polish in this aren't going to sway you over to it. Finally, the people who are going to buy it, the frothing-at-the-mouth HOMM mob, already have the game. And the expansion. So they're shelling out yet again for the original game. It's a desperate repurposing of a rapidly-withered product, further confirming Ubisoft's position in this reviewer's eyes as the new EA."

It appears the difficulty of the campaigns was, again, the deciding factor behind the poor final score (5 out of 10), which makes me wonder if the tutorial and the game manual were appropriate for the new players out there. The article is a good read though, like most content on Eurogamer.